Phone someone #TechnologyinReverse

Thought for the Day Thursday 16th November

Last week I did a post about whether we still use phones and asked ‘is the art of calling over?’. We all had a great chat about this. On balance, it was clear that the internet, automation and social media has won the ‘communication battle’.

However, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” the more things change, the more things stay the same”.

I want to share my thoughts on the balance of digital and phoning’ as my Thought for the Day

This week we have had a whole new experience in ‘selling’. I have realsied that in my 19 years of using social media I have never actually used social media to deliberately get reach and be in front of anyone. My posts and engagement has never been about measuring volume, or ROI, I have chatted, posted and enjoyed the ‘likes’ and occasional shares. I have never done a ‘mailshot’. I am a start up in every meaning of the word when you consider my skills in this respect.

What a learning, the only way to get empathy. I want to share our challenges. Hopefully to spark a conversation and also to help anyone else with this type of challenge.

Yesterday a new investor in our Crowdfund called me, wow! He shared how excited he is about what we are doing and then asked if I was actually calling any of my contacts to ask for support. I took a breath and smiled, “not really, I replied, I feel like I would be intruding on their time”.

I then went onto explain, what I want to share with you here, the challenge for us has been getting any of our posts in people’s Facebook feeds, getting emails to go to people from our database that doesn’t go into their Spam or filter into Google promotions. He then said this great phrase

“Penny, do you know there is this great new tool for us all, it is called a phone. If you use it, you can talk directly to the person you want to speak to”.

I laughed….. a lot. He said he calls it ‘technology in reverse”. Almost as though the phone should have been invented after we had all gone through the age of social media, and when we had all got fed up with the low strike rate on automated and broadcasted attempts to engage we would return to the phone.

Sadly, we are all aware that even phoning people without permission is about to be regulated, and also, we all HATE cold calls to our phone. But I think the point here is, we have people we know well, and we must remember to call them.

Onto the subject of Facebook and Google though. They really are playing a game that we don’t know how to play. That is stressful, like the first time I played Cludo and kept losing. I would love them to even the game and just charge me a subscription so that as a business I can be trusted to share good content and not abuse. Be a player at their table that evens the chances. I guess that is their challenge,who would they give that permission to; but I am not convinced it is working at the moment.

The result of the lessons over the last 3 days are

1. We are now using Advertising on Facebook, well done Facebook, thank you Mike TurnerJonathan Howkins and Rebecca Bromley for all advice

2. I will pick up the phone more, thank you Antonio

3. We are mailing a lot, and hoping the open rates are enough for us to achieve our Crowdfund targets.

4. We are learning a lot about the mailshots we are sending and refining the times we send and the messages

5. We are so grateful to all those that are sharing and endorsing the idea, that is heartwarming beyond belief

This is pushing us out of our comfort zone, terrifed of “spamming”, hating the abusive emails from people who want to shout at you rather than just unsubscribe, worried that I am appearing too focused on my own business needs and all in all, wanting to damage limitate, however, this is the game we all have to play when we want to achieve a goal in a short amount of time I guess. Doing it elegantly is our hope.

Your thoughts, experiences, feedback, and advice from experts here – all welcomed and I hope our journey is in some way passing on some knowledge.

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